Stacia Kane - Demon Inside

Every one of them was covered with demons. Her demons, crouching on rails, clinging to ornate stone, with multicolored light from the stained-glass windows playing across their slick skin. They’d come to support her at her father’s funeral.

Tears stung her eyes. Feeling a little childish, she ducked her head, pressed it against Greyson’s sleeve so she wouldn’t start sobbing. Yezer didn’t feel love, as far as she knew; their anger at the recent losses of life had more to do with fear it might happen to them than any sense of sadness. So they weren’t here out of caring, but out of respect. Somehow it meant just as much. Somehow it meant more.

Unless they were just here because funerals offered excellent feeding. Which was entirely possible. She preferred to think of it as respect.

“We need to sit down,” Brian murmured beside her, and she realized people were starting to turn and look at them—exactly what she’d been warned not to allow to happen.

Safely sandwiched on the bench between the two men, she was able to look up at the little demons again, and nod slightly, hoping they could see her gratitude. She thought they could. They nodded back, almost as one, a choreographed routine nobody else could see.

“Don’t you want to sit up front?” Brian whispered. Funny, of all of her escorts he looked the most uncomfortable. The demons and the witch all sat calmly, staring obediently ahead as if they were in a very grandiose schoolroom, but Brian fidgeted and glanced around. Of course. Not a religion thing; he felt her demons.

“My mother told me to be unobtrusive,” she said, not bothering to hide her bitterness. “Oh, and my demons are here.”

He visibly relaxed. “Thanks for telling me. I wondered why I felt kind of weird.”

“You didn’t think it was the blasphemy of being in a Protestant church?”

“I figured if I made it through the door without being smited, I had a chance.”

If the officiating pastor hadn’t stepped up to the podium at that moment, Megan probably would have laughed. As it was she just smiled softly and settled back in her seat, her right hand firmly in Greyson’s. Brian reached over to take her left, a gesture that touched her.

“…David was an accountant, known to most everybody. A family man, survived by his beloved wife Diane and his son David Junior, who will be taking over his firm and his place on the town council. You all know the good works that his company has done for the town—donating new benches for the park, sponsoring school fund-raisers, helping to keep our streets clean.

“David also had a daughter named Megan. I knew David as a good man, one who always wanted to help others…”

Megan knew she shouldn’t have expected anything else, but she still felt like someone had hit her in the chest. Her eyes stung. Brian’s hand convulsed on hers, but Greyson didn’t move. She glanced over at him. His face was impassive. Was he even listening?

She turned around, checking to see how clear the path to the door was. Not so clear. The church wasn’t crowded, but just inside the doors stood Orion Maldon, staring right at her. Their eyes met and he grinned.

She turned away quickly, to where the pastor was now giving the lectern to her brother. Great. If there was anything she didn’t need right now, it was to listen to anything Dave had to say.

“Those witches were Templeton’s guards?” she whispered to Greyson.

“Hmm? Yes. I assume they came after you on Monday while you were messing around with their car?”

“We weren’t messing around, but yes. And K—she killed them.” Megan glanced past Brian to Tera, whose eyes were focused straight ahead.

“…the best father anyone could ever ask for. Dad was always there for me…”

Greyson nodded and put his arm around her, pulling her closer so they could continue their barely audible discussion. “Don’t worry about it.”

“How can I not worry about it? Tera thinks you did it.”

“Tera can think whatever she likes, but without proof it won’t do her much good. I wasn’t even in town that night, remember? Besides, I have more sense than to go after witches and she knows it.”

“Should I tell her what happened? Brian can back—”

“Good God no, are you insane? It’s none of her business. Eventually she’ll get tired of poking around and go back to whatever else it is she does all day.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Don’t you have other things to think about just now?”

“…when I was eleven, and he helped me build a soapbox derby racer for Boy Scouts…”

She tried to tune out Dave’s speech. “Like what, how everyone is embarrassed to even say my name?”

“Did you expect anything else?” Ouch. “No, I mean Maldon over there in the corner.”

She shifted in her seat, refusing to look at Maldon again but feeling his gaze on her, while her brother continued droning in the front of the church. “He came just to get at me—at us?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Then why?”

Greyson paused. “I don’t think he was lying about your father. I think they did know each other.”

“Apparently most people did, right? The town council, the accountancy firm…” Another surge of bitterness, cold and sharp in her chest.

“…when I finally got it together to go to college, and he and Mom supported me every step of the way…”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd? They’ll barely look at you, but your father went on to become a pillar of the community, such as it is. You went to a bar last night and got threatened, but he bought benches and led parades.”

“He’s not the one who—”

“Stop playing the martyr and think, darling. What could have happened, who could have been powerful enough to make sure your father stayed in business, stayed everybody’s friend, while you twisted in the wind? Whose influence could have been brought in to play here?”

Duh. “My dad made a deal with Maldon?”

“Looks like it to me.”

“…the position in the firm was just waiting for me. He had my name put on the door before I even got there—a gift to me…”

“I suppose we need to go over there later and find out.”

“That’s my girl.” He kissed the back of her hand and looked toward the front of the church. “Does your brother ever shut up?”

She laughed before she could help herself, a quick nervous bark. Heads turned, and she quickly looked down. “Shit.”

“What?”

“What do you think? Here I am, Megan the murderous ghoul, giggling at my father’s funeral?”

Now he laughed, thankfully much more softly than she had. “What do you care what they think?”

“My mother—”

“Is a bitch. You don’t need these people, bryaela, not for anything. They can think whatever they want.”

The words sank into her, through her, a spark of truth she didn’t yet know that she could fully accept. He was right, absolutely. The thoughts and opinions of the residents of Grant Falls should be no more important to her than the results of American Idol.

Shouldn’t be, but still were. Was she that much of a wimp? Anger rose in her chest, insinuating itself through her brain, but she couldn’t tell if she was mad at them or herself. Or mad, again, at her father, who certainly had not been “the best father any girl could ever ask for.”

Dave finally ceded the floor to someone else, a face vaguely familiar to Megan and a voice more so. Bill Ryan, a golfing buddy of her father’s. She had a few dim memories of the two men drinking and talking about sports in the backyard, before she reached her teens and they did their drinking elsewhere. Bill was followed by a few other speakers, then the pastor again. Megan wanted to listen. She felt like she was at the funeral of a stranger, someone she’d never really known, and wondered if perhaps somewhere in their words she would find him.